Worry Wench

Had a bad day yesterday due to lack of sleep.  Normally, I can function pretty well on about 6 hours  with only a few minor mood swings which I perceive as being tolerable by others, but when the sleep is reduced to 4 hours.... WATCH OUT WORLD...PISSED WOMAN APPROACHING!

Reason for deprivation? I woke up at 4:15 naturally and fully intended to go back to sleep (until the time when my alarm would inform me of the impending doom of a new workday) but instead my brain decided to hijack my peace.  The dominant thought... "Did I screw up the budget yesterday?"

In the room where I am 'cubed' at work there are a few people who generally come to me for advice for voucher claims and for budget transfers from month to month and expense code to expense code.  Generally I am all good about helping them out of their predicaments and it is rather eazy-peezy.  But this time, due to the jet lag (although I will deny that I am affected by it as badly as others are) and trying to get my brain out of vacation mode, I was in the midst of a 4:00 AM worryfest concerning if I had royally screwed up budget requests for 2 people due to an overseen technicality.

I would tell myself, "Its fine, you can reverse what you did yesterday and make it all better today when you go in.  Just call accounting and have them fix it IF there is a problem with the budget month." 

Then the 'Worry Wench" residing in the evil depths of my cranium would respond with "Oh no, you weren't careful enough yesterday and they can't reverse the problem because the system is strict.  You just lost $3,000 budget."

I return again to address the wench "Regardless of if you are right or not, I can't do anything about it at 4 in the morning!"

She would then smartly reply "True, you can't do anything now, but imagine every detail of the crap you have to go through explaining to those people you helped... who TRUSTED you to advise them....that you screwed it all up for them!"

I thus lay there in a stressed out stoop imagining the pending doom at work IF IF IF there is a problem that I wasn't able to foresee.  Two hours pass by and no sleep, just closed eyes and a noticeably dismal facial expression imprinted on my face to add that much more joy to the day.

BEEP BEEP BEEP.... the alarm goes off....

Slugging to get ready and go to work, arrival and immediate 8AM call to accounting to confirm that NO, there is no problem and the budget requests done yesterday were all correctly done.

Great to hear.   Now the only thing I get out of my lack of sleep is a crappy attitude and a hope that my coworkers don't wring my neck for being short tempered with them over the next 8 hours.

Better believe I slept like a dead woman that night ... after pigging out on a grilled cheese sandwich and chocolate ice cream.


I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know? ~Ernest Hemingway

Rectal intrusion diverted

Do you sometimes feel that someone, somewhere, always has their finger up your 'boo-tay' and is attempting to control your every move like a finger puppet?

(FYI, drawing that little hand image there was quite an enjoyable task in MS PowerPoint.  Give it a try sometime, but be forewarned that if you are not so artistically inclined, lock the gun up before starting...)

This delightful day consisted of a series of unfortunate decisions made by those who like to think of themselves as people in 'control' of our business operations.  Between those ludicrous decisions also occurred a gamut of other imbecilic situations such as a team building exercise gone wrong, a testosterone filled 'my thing is bigger than your thing' fight, and a bra strap mishap.  The typical day.... in other words....

So back to the finger prodding....

The people attempting to explore my end-trails are HR, Accounting, and Operation Support.  Between those three groups and all their rules inflicted upon us innocent employees, this company could no doubt serve as the next world renowned rectal 'We'll do you deep and right' clinic. They want you to use a certain format for an open text field (why make it open text if its so controlled??), they want 4 approvals for a trip claim when you got approval to go on the stinking trip before you purchased the ticket,  and they want to assume what people like with the hopes that they are themselves 'in touch' with employee needs rather than just ask them what they like, and the list goes on and on.

What did I do to resolve the problems?   In a nutshell I told my boss he needed to say 'do it' to them so they would ignore their regulations (just this once....), I told HR that I will wash my hands clean of my volunteer work to pick up their slack until they start putting the employees as their true priority, and the rest I decided to separate myself from to let them feel the pain of self reliance.

In the end... when they started to insert the pointer finger, they were met by something too tight to breach.

On the other events....A puma fixed my twisted bra strap....and the testosterone spat dude got out with only a broken collar bone and losing his job.  I suppose that's a win, win, win for him (crazy men folk .... : )

"Could you write a note for my wife to say that my head it not up there?" ~ Rectal exam patient's request to doctor

Boredom

So many of us leave it to someone else to 'cure' our boredom, when in actuality it is purely our own faults that we feel a lack luster in stimulation. There are literally countless and infinite things one can do in a day, even alone, so there should be no complaints about boredom, but rather lack of creativity and determination to occupy oneself.

So, what can you do? You can first take care of that crud that you have been avoiding, like cleaning your house, tending the lawn, or tending the various areas of your body covered in unsightly hair...  Next you can address the mind...What do you want to learn, what do you NEED to learn to be more successful in whatever you are trying to do?  Get that book out that you didn't finish yet and get crackin'.  If you get bored of that, then try creativity for a while.  Rearrange your furniture, make up a new play for your football buddies, paint a picture for the next Mother's Day gift, write a poem for your SigO, etc.  Literally countless things exist that you can do when you get, as you call it, 'bored'.

In a single day the average American spends 4 hours watching TV, which equates to 9 years of a 65 year old person's life.  Imagine what you can do in 9 years!!! You can get a 2nd or 3rd college degree, learn 10 languages, build 9 new houses, write gobs of books and poems, etc.  My point is, if you are 'bored' it is highly likely you are saying that phrase while in the middle of two television series of which will add little to no value to your life with the exception of giving you a new idea for the next outfit to waste half a paycheck on (remember my post on need vs. want?).  This is ultimately not going to satisfy your 'boredom' and will probably just make you even more incapable of using your creativity to improve the situation.

NUTSHELL! If you feel the inclination to say "I'm bored", just don't say the phrase and instead say "I need to get busy" and get your buttooski off the couch and get moving.  By the end of the day, if you have successfully navigated through and executed your options of activities, you will feel highly accomplished and satisfied with the 24 hours that you were lucky enough to be 'bored' living through.  Remember, so many people have to work their tail off in each moment of the day just to find food to survive, so you being bored with a tummy full of grub is a blessing that should not be wasted nor ignored.

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom. ~ Thomas Carlyle

What is Prompt?

Prompt is defined in the online dictionary as follows:

prompt  (prmpt)

adj. prompt·er, prompt·est

1. Being on time; punctual.

2. Carried out or performed without delay:

tr.v. prompt·ed, prompt·ing, prompts

1. To move to act; spur; incite: A noise prompted the guard to go back and investigate.

2. To give rise to; inspire: The accident prompted a review of school safety policy.

3. To assist with a reminder; remind.

4. To assist (an actor or reciter) by providing the next words of a forgotten passage; cue.

Etc.

So the question comes: Is someone being prompt as long as they tell you within an hour, or 2 hours, or within a day of finding out some new information that would affect your behavior or actions?  If a meeting is at 1PM should you know by 9AM that day or 9AM 2 days before?  Is calling someone 'prompt' a purely individual decision based on your own punctuality standards?  Obviously, since I am writing about this, there is a conflict in the feeling of a 'prompt' action....

Without getting too much into it, and because I already received an apology followed by witnessing true regret on their face, I will just say that a meeting set for this afternoon was cancelled for which I had spent 2 days preparing for.  The decision to cancel was made before 9AM this morning and I, by accidental coincidence, found out about the cancellation by 9:20 AM. Some of you may be thinking "A few minutes later..that's not bad as far as prompt notification", but for those of you who work in a fast paced/always changing large company maybe you can feel my pain.  When something like this happens, the number of people to notify, cancelling room reservations, and breaking the news to any other persons who had been preparing (spending hours on hours creating slides and staying late into the night away from family) presentations is not a pleasant nor quick task. I tried my best to keep my irritation level less visible to my coworkers but inevitably they knew that if I was ticked.

So, back to the topic at hand.  What is prompt... my personal opinion is that a person is prompt when they meet or exceed notifying parties within or before a certain period of time... here is the equation....

Prompt Time frame: [Deadline hour - change hour] x 60 x 0.10


Example:
Meeting is at 2:00 PM
Change to the meeting occurred at 9:00 AM
Hours between change and meeting = 5
5 x 60 minutes = 300 minutes
300 x 0.10 = 30 minutes

This means that being prompt in the above situation would be notifying all parties of the change within 30 minutes of the change happening.  I think this is reasonable and lends enough time for people to adjust to the change.  The portion that is aggravating is the effort that may have gone into preparation for the event, but that part you can't change as we can't predict the future. In my situation this morning, I was 'technically' notified within the prompt time frame, however it was by accident not intention of the one who knew the change.  Thank you Ms. Lucky for that info...

To sum up... if you want to avoid ticking off the majority of people in the event of a change, please be prompt [see equation] and respect other people's need for that new information to be shared with them.

The pic above, one of my fav cartoonists, is from http://www.nataliedee.com/archives/2006/Apr/

Work Smells

So imagine this.. You are at your desk in an open area office and unexpectedly a curious smell of what could either be pulled pork or BO passes under your nose.  What do you do?  Do you stand up and do a sanity check by asking your coworker if they smell the same thing?  Do you not say anything and pray that it is indeed pulled pork that some oddball is eating at 9 AM?


So this is the dilemma that so many of us experience on a daily basis while having to work with others.  I'm not talking about the normal dude that burned the popcorn, but rather the people who need a nasal software upgrade.


Anchors - Lets start with an easy one.  Those people who seem to enjoy gluing their butts to their seats from 8AM to 5PM (or longer) and only decide to shift from that location when they have to get some more food.   An anchor will most likely have their breakfast, lunch, and even dinner stashed away in their desk in every crevice imaginable. They have a tiny refrigerator under their desk with dressings and sliced cheese, as well as their next week's lunches and a gallon of the sweetest iced tea known to man in the break room fridge. Because they sit and eat their meals at their desk, we all get to enjoy every whiff of tuna, egg salad, and hot wings that he has in his arsenal of smells.  The only remedy for this is to not become one of them and get out of Dodge during the lunch hour.


Air Fresheners - These are worse than the name may lead one to imagine.  The "Air Fresheners" are the repulsive people who smell so bad that it causes you to need to spray your own desk area to try to MASK their nasty body odor.  At first you wonder "Is it me? Did I forget to put on my Sure?" but you take a quick whiff and your pits smell like roses compared to what is attacking your nose on the outside.  Then you look over and see Mr. Wonderful in the next cube stretching his arms to the sky.  Like blinking white landing lights the source of the stench is apparent.  What can you do?  Unfortunately these cases are not the ones you can address directly and your only option is to say to them "Did you bring Kimchi today?  I swear I could smell Kimchi a few minutes ago".  Maybe they will get the hint and scrub-a-dub-dub a bit harder.


Fabios  - These could be considered good or bad, depending on if you are attracted to a dog in heat.  The men and women who forget that the human nose adjusts to constant smells and cancels out that which is there perpetually need to do a reality check when they decide to bathe in a pool of musk cologne.  The rest of us don't want to smell the greasy beach tanned ladies man wanna-be while we crunch the numbers.  Keep your musk to a minimum PLEASE even if you say you can't smell it.


I never discovered the source of the stench from this morning.  I do know however that the 'lady from the East' left the area and soon after that the stench magically dissipated.  Pulled pork anyone?